Pixel Scroll 6/16/17 There’s A Scroll In The Bottom Of The Sea

(1) JACK KIRBY NAMED DISNEY LEGEND. The late Jack Kirby will be honored with the Disney Legend Award at this year’s D23 Expo in Anaheim.

JACK KIRBY first grabbed our attention in the spring of 1941 with Captain America, a character he created with Joe Simon. Kirby then followed this debut with a prolific output of comic books in the Western, Romance, and Monster genres–all a prelude to his defining work helping to create the foundations of the Marvel Universe. For the next decade, Kirby and co-creator Stan Lee would introduce a mind-boggling array of new characters and teams — including the Avengers, Hulk, Thor, Iron Man, Silver Surfer, Ant-Man, Wasp, Black Panther, S.H.I.E.L.D., and the Inhumans. Kirby was inducted into the Eisner Hall of Fame’s 1987 inaugural class and continued creating comics throughout the ‘90s before passing away in 1994.

Other honorees of this year’s Legends Award are Carrie Fisher, Clyde “Gerry” Geronimi, Manuel Gonzales, Mark Hamill, Stan Lee, Garry Marshall, Julie Taymor, and Oprah Winfrey.

(2) BILL FINGER AWARD WINNERS. Jack Kirby, along with Bill Messner-Loebs, is also a winner of the 2017 Bill Finger Award presented by Comic-Con International.

Bill Messner-Loebs and Jack Kirby have been selected to receive the 2017 Bill Finger Award for Excellence in Comic Book Writing. The selection, made by a blue-ribbon committee chaired by writer-historian Mark Evanier, was unanimous.

“As always, I asked on my blog for suggestions of worthy recipients,” Evanier explains. “Many were nominated and the committee chose Bill as the worthiest of those still alive and working, and Jack because although his artwork has always been justly hailed, his contribution as a writer has been too often minimized or overlooked. In fact, in the years we’ve been doing this award, Jack Kirby has received many more nominations than anyone else, but we held off honoring him until this year because it seemed appropriate to finally do it in the centennial of his birth, and because members of his family will be at Comic-Con to accept on his behalf.”

The Bill Finger Award was created in 2005 at the instigation of comic book legend Jerry Robinson. “The premise of this award is to recognize writers for a body of work that has not received its rightful reward and/or recognition,” Evanier explains. “Even though the late Bill Finger now finally receives credit for his role in the creation of Batman, he’s still the industry poster boy for writers not receiving proper reward or recognition.”

Kirby’s history was covered in the first item. Here’s the citation for the second winner.

Bill Messner-Loebs has been a cartoonist and writer since the 1970s. He has worked for DC, Marvel, Comico, Power Comics, Texas Comics, Vertigo, Boom!, Image, IDW, and the U.S. State Department (for which he produced a comic about the perils of land mines). He has written Superman, Flash, Aquaman, Mr. Monster, Hawkman, Green Arrow, Wonder Woman, Dr. Fate, Jonny Quest, Spider-Man, Thor, and the Batman newspaper strip. He wrote and drew Journey: The Adventures of Wolverine MacAlistaire and Bliss Alley, and he co-created The Maxx and Epicurus the Sage. He has also delivered pizzas, done custom framing, been a library clerk, sold art supplies, and taught cartooning.

(3) TROLLS. Recent Facebook experiences led David Gerrold to post a thorough discussion of trolling.

There is no freedom of speech on Facebook — Facebook is a corporation, like a newspaper or a television station. They are not obligated to protect your rights. You waived specific rights when you agreed to the terms of service —

But those terms of service have to be a two-way street. They represent a contract between service provider and consumer. And there must be a responsibility on the part of the service provider to protect the consumers from the abusive behavior of those who violate the social contract of our nation.

The social contract, you say? I’ve heard people argue, “I never agreed to a social contract.”

Actually, you agreed to it when you accepted the responsibility of being a citizen — you agreed to abide not only by the laws of the nation, but by the underlying promise of this land, the promise of liberty and justice for all.

So, I do not regard trolls as simply an internet annoyance — I regard them as human failures — as individuals who have forgotten the promise on which this nation was founded. They are not much better than caged chimpanzees who are good at screeching at the bars and throwing feces at anyone who gets to close.

Because in the great grand scheme of things, every moment of our lives is a moment of choice. We can choose to dream of the stars, or we can choose to wallow in the mud. We can choose to create something of value for ourselves and our families and our friends — or we can choose to destroy the well-being of others.

(4) TOLKIEN BIOGRAPHER AIDS CROWDFUNDING EFFORT. John Garth, author of Tolkien and the Great War, has donated signed copies of his book to the fundraising campaign for Oxford University’s project to document the First World War.

I’ve donated five signed copies of Tolkien and the Great War to help raise money for this appeal. It’s only thanks to the personal letters and photographs preserved by various Great War veterans, by families and by museums that I was able to bring to life the experiences of Tolkien and his friends in the training camps and trenches of the war. If you can donate, please do. Whether you can or can’t, please share this announcement:–

Win over £1,000/$1,000 worth of Tolkien Books… and Help Oxford University Save Items from World War One

Oxford University is currently crowd-funding a project to run a mass-digitization initiative of publicly-held material from the First World War and as is well known the experiences J. R. R. Tolkien underwent in 1916 in the Battle of the Somme had a profound effect on him and his writing. To assist with our major crowd-funding appeal we have been generously supported by Tolkien scholars and publishers, allowing us to present a prize draw opportunity to win three major publications amounting to over £1,000. Our sincerest thanks go to John Garth, Wiley/Blackwells, and Routledge for their help.

To enter the prize draw go to: https://oxreach.hubbub.net/p/lestweforget/

If you sponsor us by pledging £1 or more (or equivalent) you will be entered into a draw to win one of five copies signed by John Garth of his ‘Tolkien and the Great War’ (pbk, HarperCollins, 2011 – RRP: £9.99; $12.00; ‚¬11.99).

If you sponsor us by pledging £5 or more (or equivalent) you will also be entered into a draw to win one of three copies of ‘A Companion to J. R. R. Tolkien’ (hbk, Wiley/Blackwells, 2014) signed by the editor (RRP: £125; $140; ‚¬150).

Finally, if you sponsor us by pledging £10 or more (or equivalent) you will also be entered into a draw to a full set set of ‘J. R. R. Tolkien: Critical Assessments of Major Writers’ (4 volumes, hbk, Routledge, 2017) signed by the editor (RRP: £900; $1,180; ‚¬930)

In addition to these chances of winning, you will also be helping to save and preserve important objects from the First World War which are in danger of being lost on a daily basis.

Here’s the home site of the preservation project: ‘Lest we forget’ – a national initiative to save the memories of 1914-1918

We are raising £80,000 to train local communities across the UK to run digital collection days to record and save objects and stories of the generation who lived through World War One. Every item collected will then be published on November 11th 2018 through a free-to-use online database for schools, scholars, and the wider public.

But we cannot achieve this alone so please help by donating to support the training days, outreach activities, and the equipment we need.

saving the past for the future – world war one
2018 will mark the centennial anniversary of the end of World War One. Few families in Britain were unaffected by the conflict, and in thousands of attics across the country there are photographs, diaries, letters, and mementos that tell the story of a generation at war, of the loved ones who fought in the conflict, served on the home front, or lost fathers and mothers. Help us launch this national effort to digitally capture, safeguard, and share these important personal items and reminiscences from the men and women of 1914-1918. Help us support local digitisation events across village halls, community centres, schools, and libraries.

(5) THE FOUNDATION OF MIDDLE-EARTH. Josephine Livingstone reviews The Tale of Beren and Lúthien for New Republic in “J.R.R. Tolkien’s Love Story”.

And The Tale of Beren and Lúthien is more like a scholarly volume than a storybook. There are versions of the tale in verse, and versions in prose. There are versions where the villain is an enormous, evil cat, and versions where the villain is a wolf. Names change frequently. But instead of taking the “best text” route, where the editor chooses a single manuscript to bear witness to the lost story, Christopher Tolkien has offered up what remains and allowed the reader to choose. It’s a generous editorial act, and a fitting tribute in memoriam to his parents’ romance.

(6) MEDICAL UPDATE. Fanartist Steve Stiles sent this news about his diagnosis and treatment plans.

I just found out, via the lung specialist I saw the week before last, that I’m *NOT* having lung surgery at Sinai on the 20th, but rather a consultation re my “options” (would that be chemo vs. surgery? ), followed by *another* appointment to have a tube inserted down into my lung, which sounds like a whole bunch of fun. *THEN* I go in for surgery or whatever.

Looks like July is pretty well shot as far as having the two weekend cookouts with friends who we traditionally have over. It’s a drag, but considering the alternative….

(7) DALMAS OBIT. Author John Dalmas (1926-2017) has died reports Steve Fahnestalk:

With great sadness I learn that John Dalmas has died, either last night or early this morning; I understand he was in the hospital with pneumonia. Author of “The Yngling” and many other books, he was a good friend to MosCon and PESFA. You will be missed, Onkel !

Dalmas’ The Yngling, his first published sf, was serialized in Analog in 1969 and made especially memorable by Kelly Freas’ cover art.

(8) TRIVIAL TRIVIA

Ray Bradbury and Ralph Waldo Emerson are descendents of Mary Perkins Bradbury, who was sentenced to be hanged in 1692 in the Salem Witch trials, but managed to escape before her execution could take place.

(9) TODAY IN HISTORY

  • June 16, 1954 Them! premiere in New York City.
  • June 16, 1978Jaws 2 swims into theaters.

(10) THAT THING YOU DIDN’T KNOW YOU NEEDED. The Golden Snitch Harry Potter Fidget Spinners are selling like hotcakes. Who knows if there will be any left by the time you read this? (I’m kidding — they’re all over the internet.)

(11) AWESOMECON. The Washington Post’s Michael Cavna, in “Over Awesome Con weekend, D.C. will prove its geek-to-wonk ratio”, previews Awesomecon, the Washington, D.C. comicon taking place this weekend. He talks about the celebrities who are coming, including Chris Hadfield, Edgar Wright, David Tennant, and Stan Lee, still hustling at 94. A sidebar has short items of some of the panels, including “CosLove Presents: #I Can Be A Hero, where cosplayers talk about the good deeds they do, like volunteering at hospitals. Finally, Manor Hill Brewing (which is at manorhillbrewing.com) has the official Awesomecon beer, Atomic Smash, which has a robot and an A-bomb!

So could King, who worked overseas with the agency’s counterterrorism unit after 9/11, ever see the Caped Crusader making it as a CIA agent?

“I can see Batman doing the job,” King says, but it is “harder to see him filling out the paperwork. And without good paperwork skills, you’ll never even make ­GS-12 in this town.”

This town, where sometimes the political wonk and comics geek are the same person.

(12) GIFT CULTURE VS. WAGE CULTURE. At Anime Feminist, Amelia Cook triggers a collision between fandom’s gift culture and those running megacons who expect on skilled people to work for free — “The Big Problem Behind Unpaid Interpreters: Why anime fans should value their skills”. [Hat tip to Petréa Mitchell.]

This week Anime Expo, the biggest anime convention in the English speaking world, put a call out for volunteer interpreters. Anime Expo is far from a new event, and had over 100,000 attendees last year. How did they fail to account for the cost of professional interpreters when budgeting? If they can’t afford to pay interpreters, what hope do any of the smaller cons have?

Let’s be real: they didn’t fail to account for it, and they can afford it. AX is a big enough event in the fandom calendar that they could have bumped ticket prices up by under a dollar each to bring in the necessary funds. If for some reason that wasn’t an option, they’re a big enough name that they could even have crowdfunded it. There’s no good reason not to pay every single interpreter for their work. There are, however, a couple of bad ones.

The most generous reading of their actions is that not a single person on the entire AX staff understands what interpreting involves. More likely is that they considered it an unnecessary cost, knowing they could get enthusiastic amateurs to work for free without putting a value on their time. Ours is a culture of scanlators and fansubbers working for the love of it, right? Why not give these lucky worker bees a chance to meet some cool people and see behind the scenes of a big event?

….When I first saw the tweet from AX, it made me viscerally angry. I couldn’t stop thinking about it, to the point that I’ve written this post. What possible justification is there for this decision? What on earth made them think it would be acceptable? Were interpreters even discussed at the budgeting stage (and if not, why not)? Will they get their stable of unpaid amateur interpreters anyway, or will the outcry their tweet sparked make capable people steer clear? If they don’t get enough sufficiently capable volunteers, will they fork out for professionals or settle for people with a lower level of Japanese? What are their priorities in this situation? What were their priorities when they drew up this year’s budget?

(13) BATLIGHT. Here’s what it looked like when they flashed the Bat Signal on LA City Hall.

(14) SHARKES ON DUTY. The Shadow Clarke Jury’s latest reviews include coverage of two Hugo novel finalists (if you count that the Fifth Season one also covers the Obelisk Gate a bit.)

I wanted to begin this piece by noting that I put The Fifth Season at the top of my ballot for the Hugo last year — although this is somewhat undermined by the fact that I can no longer remember for sure if I actually voted. One time when I did actually vote was at the 2005 Glasgow Worldcon, where all that was required was posting a paper form into a ballot box in the dealers’ room. That year there was an all British shortlist suggesting perhaps that the domestic audience dominated the nomination process but also the then high international standing of British SFF. I voted for Iain M Banks’s The Algebraist, which was only on the ballot paper because Terry Pratchett had withdrawn Going Postal. The Hugo was won by Susanna Clarke’s Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell, which I had read, loved, and placed last on my ballot because it was fantasy. In retrospect, I shouldn’t have been surprised at the result because J. K. Rowling and Neil Gaiman had won recently and, in any case, Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell was probably the most substantial novel on that ballot. The only virtue I can now see in the decision I made at the time is that it served to reduce the difficulty of making a choice.

While an increasing number of writers have made strenuous and laudable efforts to confront the “boys’ own adventure’ stereotypes of core genre archetypes“ the most famous recent example being Ann Leckie’s Imperial Radch trilogy — progressive experimentation and stylistic complexity in terms of the text itself is much, much rarer and receives scant notice. When Yoon Ha Lee’s Ninefox Gambit turned up on this year’s Clarke Award shortlist, of the three books I’d not read already it was definitely the one I was most excited about. My encounters with Lee’s short fiction had left me with an impression of complex ideas nestled within a prose that was dense and highly coloured and often abstruse — pluses for me on all three counts. Would Ninefox Gambit prove to be my space opera holy grail: a thrilling adventure in terms of prose as well as high-concept, widescreen FX? I was eager to find out.

It’s space opera, you know?

One of last year’s most famous, most advertised, most-clearly-recognized-as-science-fiction novels, on a shortlist almost entirely of famous, advertised novels–especially in relation to the rest of the 86-title submissions list–the inclusion of Ninefox Gambit on the Clarke shortlist was inevitable. Its reputation as a challenging narrative, its loyalty to standard genre form, and the requisite spaceship on the cover have established its place in the science fiction book award Goldilocks zone. If things go as they did last year and in 2014, it’s also a likely winner.

Although I’ve already made it clear this is not the kind of book I would normally value or enjoy, the placement of Ninefox Gambit on the Clarke shortlist is something I asked for last year, though not in such direct terms:

(15) NUMBER OF THE FOX. Elsewhere, Terence Blake responded to Jonathan McCalmont’s earlier review of Ninefox with some interesting points: “NINEFOX GAMBIT (2): power-fantasy or philo-fiction?”

I agree with everything that McCalmont says about the novel’s structural flaws, and in particular the problematic subordination of Yoon Ha Lee’s speculative inventivity and complexity to the fascistic, bellicose form of military science fiction. However, I don’t fully recognize the novel from McCalmont’s description.

1) The novel reads like both science fiction and fantasy, but there are many ways to blur or to undercut the distinction. In the case of NINEFOX GAMBIT I think that the “fantasy” aspect is only superficial. It is derived from the fact that the “hard” science underlying the story is not physics but mathematics. It has this structural feature in common with Neal Stephenson’s ANATHEM, which nonetheless is a very different sort of novel….

(16) FROM TOP TO, ER, BOTTOM. For your fund of general knowledge — “Every British swear word has been officially ranked in order of offensiveness”.

The UK’s communications regulator, Ofcom, interviewed more than 200 people across the UK on how offensive they find a vast array of rude and offensive words and insults.

People were asked their opinion on 150 words in total. These included general swear words, words linked to race and ethnicity, gender and sexuality, body parts and health conditions, religious insults and sexual references, as well as certain hand gestures.

(17) MARVEL LEGACY 1. Sounds like Marvel is about to push the “reset” button.

An Asgardian titan. A Wakandan warrior bred to be a king. The very first Sorcerer Supreme.

Since its inception, Marvel has been delivering groundbreaking heroes and explosive stories. Now, prepare to return to the dawn of time, as Marvel introduces you to the first Avengers from 1,000,000 BC — when iconic torch-bearers such as Odin, Iron Fist, Star Brand, Ghost Rider, Phoenix, Agamotto, and Black Panther come together for the startling origin of the Marvel Universe, in MARVEL LEGACY #1!

The acclaimed team of writer Jason Aaron (Mighty Thor) and artist Esad Ribic (Secret Wars) reunite for an all-new 50-page blockbuster one-shot that will take you through time to the current Marvel Universe, showing you how it’s truly “all connected.” A true homage to Marvel’s groundbreaking stories, MARVEL LEGACY brings your favorite characters together for exciting and epic new stories that will culminate in returning to original series numbering for long-running titles.

MARVEL LEGACY #1 isn’t simply a history lesson,” says SVP and Executive Editor Tom Brevoort. “Rather, it’s the starting gun to a bevy of mysteries and secrets and revelations that will reverberate across the Marvel Universe in the weeks and months to come! No character, no franchise will be untouched by the game-changing events that play out across its pages. Jason and Esad pulled out all the stops to fat-pack this colossal issue with as much intrigue, action, surprise, mystery, shock and adventure as possible!€

MARVEL LEGACY #1 will present all fans — new readers and current readers — the very best jumping on point in the history of comics,” says Marvel Editor in Chief Axel Alonso. “What Jason and Esad have crafted is more grand and more gargantuan than anything we have ever seen before and introduces concepts and characters the Marvel Universe has never encountered. Fans are going to witness an all-new look at the Marvel Universe starting at one of the earliest moments in time carried all the way into present day. Not only will this be the catalyst for Marvel evolving and moving forward, but expect it to be the spark that will ignite the industry as a whole.”

[Thanks to John King Tarpinian, Martin Morse Wooster, Steve Stiles, and Mark-kitteh for some of these stories, and a hat tip to Petréa Mitchell. Title credit belongs to File 770 contributing editor of the day Jayne.]

119 thoughts on “Pixel Scroll 6/16/17 There’s A Scroll In The Bottom Of The Sea

  1. @Lee —

    Contrarius, at this point you’re sea-lioning. Remember the First Rule of Holes.

    In this case I don’t believe I’m guilty of either of those sins. OTOH, I’m very susceptible to the urge to White Knight (minus the gender implications), and to that crime I plead eternally guilty as charged. 😉

    @Xtifr —

    So, I refuse to assume that FB is to blame or that they’re blameless. Taking either position would be arguing in advance of the facts–including facts we may never receive.

    Exactly this!

  2. @Rev. Bob —

    Did you think nobody would notice how you conveniently skipped right over how I called you out

    I skipped your whole post, Bob. Intentionally. Funny how personal attacks turn me right off of being interested in anything else the attacker may have to say.

    for demanding that we average users do for free

    Another straw man.

    Here’s what I was actually doing: I was poking holes in people’s complaints about Facebook by pointing out that they didn’t actually have any better, workable ideas about how FB could be moderating their system.

    Is Facebook paying you to act as its apologist?

    Ha! No such luck.

    Are you perhaps from someplace outside the U.S.?

    Sorry, no.

    I ask because the notion of “elections,” by which the populace puts those legislators into (and removes the, from) office, seems completely foreign to you. Certainly you make no mention of it in your talk of a “legislative ‘mob’” that “get[s] their way unless somebody complains.”

    So sorry to be incomplete in my explanations. It seemed to me that my post was already quite long enough! And if you’ve ever lived in a Republican state — actually, IIRC, I believe you live in the same state as I do — you know how little individual votes can matter at times.

    Or are you claiming that Facebook users can vote its moderators and board members out of the company for incompetence? If so, by all means, show me the mechanism. I’d like to see that.

    That’s a different discussion, but in a way, they can. Vote with your pocketbook.

  3. @Contrarius
    In your view, nipples are not a political statement that requires protection, but Neo-Nazi views are. However, many women do believe that their right to expose their chests publically should be the same as a man’s, and that the condemnation and censorship of female breasts is in fact political. So FB is in fact making a political judgement that female tits are intolerable and censorable, but neo-Nazi views should not be interfered with. IMO, FB is already making political judgements of who they want to condemn and who they don’t. That you may agree with their judgements on tits and Nazis does not make them objective.

    FB is a private entity that can decide to impose stricter controls on its users than the government can on the general population. They COULD (for example) have AI flag things like the use of Nazi imagery or hate speech – not to summarily ban them, but to weigh in the decision when complaints are brought. But when FB shrugs its shoulders and says there’s nothing they can do about it because Freeze Peach, I think it’s more about profit than patriotism. Because open racism and Neo Nazism are suddenly popular, FB is reluctant to discourage them (as FB has a constitutional right to do) because doing so might cut into the profit margin. IMO, that’s a distasteful choice, no matter how many American flags you wrap around it or patriotic platitudes you intone over it.

  4. I enjoyed the “Powerless” episode, thanks for the embed. I wish it had gotten more support; I liked the cast a lot. I’m not a sitcom person, but that show made me laugh.

    @Tom Galloway: I would watch that show. It would be earnestly Canadian.

    ———————————

    Facebook is just a mess. Nipples are immediately censored; Nazis and other hate speech and direct threats of personal violence go on just fine. Trolls can get you shut down, but they’re allowed to keep on spewing their filth. You’re screwed unless you have a lot of friends or “friends”.

    They do have human moderators, who get paid the princely sum of $15/hr to look at all the atrocities. One of their moderators, an Irishman of Iraqi origin was monitoring things in Arabic. A glitch revealed his name, profile, etc. to everyone he’d moderated. Including ISIS and Hamas. He had to flee the country for fear of his life.

    https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/jun/16/facebook-moderators-identity-exposed-terrorist-groups

    They could do better, but they’re too cheap and greedy to bother. It’s all about the clicks and the advertising profits. Money.

    Go, mobs, go.

  5. @Jayn —

    However, many women do believe that their right to expose their chests publically should be the same as a man’s, and that the condemnation and censorship of female breasts is in fact political. So FB is in fact making a political judgement that female tits are intolerable and censorable, but neo-Nazi views should not be interfered with. IMO, FB is already making political judgements of who they want to condemn and who they don’t.

    These are good points, and they reveal some of the fuzzy edges in how organizations make their moderating decisions.

    There’s often a lot of disagreement about what constitutes protected speech. First, actual words are obviously speech, and so they are at the top of the class when it comes to speech protections. Bare breasts may be political, but they are not words — so they are not as likely to be protected. That’s how it works in politics and in law, as well as in moderation.

    FB is a private entity that can decide to impose stricter controls on its users than the government can on the general population.

    Right. Absolutely.

    They COULD (for example) have AI flag things like the use of Nazi imagery or hate speech – not to summarily ban them, but to weigh in the decision when complaints are brought.

    Right. And for all we know, they do exactly that. We don’t know the details of how they make their moderating decisions. At least I don’t — do you?

    But when FB shrugs its shoulders and says there’s nothing they can do about it because Freeze Peach, I think it’s more about profit than patriotism.

    I’d like to see exactly what FB has actually said in any such cases. Do you know of any sources for such info?

  6. I want to express my gratitude to Mike Glyer for the excellent work he continues to do at File770. Mike, thank you! You are a taonga* of fantom.

    Prior to a few years ago, I would have visited File770 a handful of times, but since the puppy kerfuffle, a community of fans has arisen and it’s become a regular hangout for me. The top posts are diverse and so not always of interest to me (though they are of interest to someone!), but it’s the comments that are the main draw (and a big part of that is due to Mike’s hosting style which allows for a reasonably wide latitude, but stepping in when things get too heated). So for most part, commenters are able to disagree without getting toxic, and that has attracted like-minded reasonable commenters.

    I can count on being informed, amused, and more book recommendations that I can feasibly read in a lifetime. I’ve even been inspired(?) to commit the occasional filk which I’d never done before. It’s all your fault!

    I’ve not met Mike in person, though I’d seen him on a panel, at Aussiecon (the only Worldcon I’ve attended). It was on ‘zines, in one of the smaller rooms, later in the afternoon. IIRC, there was a discussion of print vs online. (I was too chicken to say hello)

    *Maori word meaning prized treasure.

  7. But isn’t that exactly what people are complaining about right now? The fact that FB’s first line of defense is automated?

    No, people are complaining about Facebook’s first line of defense being crappy. Automation entered the conversation because you brought it up in defense of Facebook. To which I responded that if Facebook can’t get automated complaint handling to work, they should still be able to automate other stuff and have relatively much resources available for handling complaints.

    That same principle might be applied here. FB isn’t necessarily ignoring people just because they often answer requests for moderation with a no.

    Are you suggesting that Gerrold might have been banned not as an automated response, but because an employee read his post and found it offensive? Maybe – but it’s still a crappy decision, and it’s still indicative of serious problems with how Facebook handles complaints and the role Facebook currently plays in society.

    I’m literally a card-carrying member of the ACLU. Obviously, I have strong opinions about civil liberties. And guess what — nobody is truly free to espouse their chosen beliefs unless EVERYONE is free to do the same.

    There’s a lot to be said about that statement, but I’ll just say this for now:
    If you really mean that – and if you mean it’s relevant for a discussion about Facebook bans – you ought to be a lot more concerned about Gerrold being banned than you apparently are.

  8. I agree with Soon Lee: becoming a Filer has given me a lot of laughs, much fellowship online and IRL, and a truly giant TBR pile. From the top of Mt. Tsundoku, I salute Mike.

  9. @ Contrarius: And guess what — nobody is truly free to espouse their chosen beliefs unless EVERYONE is free to do the same.

    This is the free-market argument applied to public speech, and it has exactly the same fallacy: in the absence of any form of regulation, the biggest and nastiest contenders take over the space and force everyone else out, and then nobody is free but them! We’re arguing for regulation that DOES allow everybody to espouse their chosen beliefs. You appear to be arguing in favor of the biggest and nastiest.

    Or maybe you’ll understand it better this way: when your method of “espousing your chosen beliefs” is to threaten, harass, and force others out of the marketplace, you’ve gone beyond any reasonable interpretation of “freedom of speech” and aligned yourself with the likes of the NRA extremists. Hate speech, threats, etc. is terrorism.

  10. @lurkertype —

    One of their moderators, an Irishman of Iraqi origin was monitoring things in Arabic. A glitch revealed his name, profile, etc. to everyone he’d moderated. Including ISIS and Hamas. He had to flee the country for fear of his life.

    I agree with you on this one — FB let its employees down in an awful way. And I hope the exposed moderators end up with big settlements for it!

    @Johan P —

    No, people are complaining about Facebook’s first line of defense being crappy. Automation entered the conversation because you brought it up in defense of Facebook. To which I responded that if Facebook can’t get automated complaint handling to work, they should still be able to automate other stuff and have relatively much resources available for handling complaints.

    How do you know they aren’t already doing this — “automating other stuff” to have “relatively much resources available for handling complaints”?

    As mentioned in another post, some folks seems to be “arguing in advance of the facts”.

    Are you suggesting that Gerrold might have been banned not as an automated response, but because an employee read his post and found it offensive?

    Nope. A couple of different branches of the discussion are getting conflated here. That one was in reference to complaints about Nazis NOT getting banned or blocked.

    If you really mean that – and if you mean it’s relevant for a discussion about Facebook bans – you ought to be a lot more concerned about Gerrold being banned than you apparently are.

    Yes, I really meant it — except that I’m not sure my ACLU card is actually in my wallet at this particular moment in time. It has been there in the past — and I absolutely am a contributing member.

    And yes, I *am* concerned about Gerrold being blocked. Just go look at my post at the top of the Gerrold thread. I shared his situation on both my professional and personal FB accounts (yes, I avoid using them, but yes, I have them) and asked everyone to file complaints about his banning, as I did. What else did you expect me to do about it? The difference here is that I am blaming the trolls for that ban — not FB.

    @Lee —

    This is the free-market argument applied to public speech, and it has exactly the same fallacy: in the absence of any form of regulation, the biggest and nastiest contenders take over the space and force everyone else out, and then nobody is free but them! We’re arguing for regulation that DOES allow everybody to espouse their chosen beliefs. You appear to be arguing in favor of the biggest and nastiest.

    I am not now, nor have I ever, argued for no regulation — I’m all in favor of banning threats of violence, for instance. And I often think that too many people get away with making such threats publicly — just as some of our politicians have been doing lately. But I’m not in favor of banning Nazis just because they’re Nazis.

  11. Contrarius: May I recommend that you go back and read your own posts, and make another attempt at seeing what people have reacted to? Because as far as I can tell you spend a lot of time contradicting your own arguments, and refusing you have said things several other people seem to think you have said. So it seems to me you’re re having some pretty major problems expressing your views correctly.

  12. @Johan P —

    Because as far as I can tell you spend a lot of time contradicting your own arguments, and refusing you have said things several other people seem to think you have said.

    I seriously doubt that I’ve contradicted myself, but I’m always happy to improve my debating technique. Please feel free to quote any contradictory statements that you believe I’ve made.

  13. Off-topic, and I fully understand why he doesn’t want comments, so I’ll just say that someone has very recently demonstrated that The Iliad is a gift that keeps on giving.

  14. @Contrarius:

    for demanding that we average users do for free

    Another straw man.

    Here’s what I was actually doing: I was poking holes in people’s complaints about Facebook by pointing out that they didn’t actually have any better, workable ideas about how FB could be moderating their system.

    Coming up with those “better, workable ideas” is WORK, and people get PAID for it. Not only do they get paid, they get paid WELL. You want us to do that for free. To quote Harlan Ellison on a similar subject, “Fuck you, pay me” if you want my solutions. I’ve been out of a coding job for damn near a year. Fuck you for even hinting that I should give away my labor to benefit a multibillion-dollar megacorp.

    you know how little individual votes can matter at times.

    At least with the government we get votes. Not so with Facebook. “Little” is infinitely more significant than “zero.”

    Look, I get it if you like to spend your Saturdays JAQing off. Lots of people do. Most of them, however, have the decency to do so in private. Might I suggest that you do likewise?

  15. Matthew Johnson: Meredith Moment: Until June 21 all ebooks from ChiZine Publications (including my collection Irregular Verbs and Other Stories) are $1.99

    Thanks for the notification, but yegods, that is the absolute worst publisher website interface I have ever seen. I am convinced that they don’t actually want to sell their books.

    What in the world was the person who came up with that presentation thinking???

  16. Contrarius: two things.

    1) You are looking at the Gerrold case as if it were in isolation. As if this were the only evidence we have.

    About every week or two someone I know sends through a screencap or several either showing one of two things: their complaint regarding a comment they flagged, often including the sort of politics that actively advocate for the deaths of hundreds or millions, often explicitly violent in themselves, with Facebook’s response indicating they have looked at the comment and deemed it not violating their standards. OR, they post the screencap of a comment of theirs or someone else’s that got that person banned for 24 hours – if themselves – or for longer term. Those comments virtually never advocate violence or include remotely the violent language of the non-violating comments, but do come from explicitly progressive politics. When I look at Gerrold’s banning, I look at it through that constant lense. I admit this means I do not demand the same level of proof I would demand if it were a rare or isolated case, because at this point I think demanding that level of evidence anywhere short of a court of law is tantamount to declaring racism doesn’t hurt people because I, a white woman, have rarely seen real people use racist terms and dhen I did, my personal circle condemned them as ignorant assholes.

    2) as one of your proposed solutions you’ve suggested if people here don’t like it they can build their own platform. I repeat merely for the egregious stupidity of the suggestion which even you should recognize, of challenginb individuals with individual incomes to compete directly with a company worth billions.

    (Edited for phone induced typos.)

  17. What Soon Lee said.

    On my Facebook feed, I regularly get notifications that Janis Ian and Substantia Jones and/or her Adipositivity Project have been banned. The Adipositivity Project is naked fat people, posted with banners in order to comply with Facebook’s truly ridiculous fear of nipples, and Janis Ian is a pissed off lefty musician who sometimes swears but mostly has opinions and a wife. The posts that lead to their banning are not extreme in any way and the banning generally takes place shortly after posting. It can take several days to reverse that.

    I also am a First Amendment absolutist and card carrying (for some value of carry that doesn’t include my wallet) member of the ACLU, but that doesn’t apply to corporations. If Facebook can determine that hate speech doesn’t violate its terms and conditions and do it quickly (I think the record for anecdata is 45 minutes), I’m damned if I understand why it can take them days to determine that troll brigade complaints of nipple-free nudity and whatthehellistheGOPthinking? posts are without foundation.

    Would it be hard and potentially expensive to provide better second line defense? Sure. That doesn’t mean it shouldn’t be done. And if they really want to do better, which I’m not convinced they do, then they can come up with terms and conditions that limit threats of murder and rape, as well as hate speech. Also, free the nipple.

  18. @Contrarius
    True, the selfie of the Syrian refugee with Angela Merkel was taken two years ago, but the photo keeps cropping up on Facebook, usually blaming the young man pictured for one terrorist attack or another. The last time I heard about it, the young man in the photo was falsely accused of being Aniz Amri, the terrorist who crashed a truck into a Berlin Christmas market in December 2016, i.e. six months ago. I wouldn’t be surprised if the photo of the young man had been linked to other terrorist attacks since then. This guy has to keep reporting his photo to Facebook over and over again, because amazingly those same automated systems that banned David Gerrold following a flood of troll comments are utterly unable to flag a single recognisable photo for deletion upon appearance.

    Regarding the nipples vs. Nazis controversy, as Jayn already said, banning images of women’s breasts is a political statement. It wasn’t just the photo in question either, Facebook has also banned decidedly non-sexy photos of breast cancer survivors, breast-feeding moms and even the famous press photo of the napalm burned girl during the Vietnam war. Facebook is imposing the puritanical US standards regarding female nudity on the rest of the world, which is definitely political. And yes, as a private company they have the right to do that, but that doesn’t mean deleting any hint of a female breast regardless of context is not political.

    The slogan in the photo with the topless lady was a vile racial slur (and misspelled, too, for good measure). And racial slurs are not protected speech. Besides, unlike the US Germany has laws against hate speech (which I’m very grateful for) and if Facebook wants to do business here, they should abide by our laws.

    I guess you’re not that aware of the situation in Germany, where Facebook is the main means via which the xenophobic Pegida movement and the associated far right party AfD spread their messages. Quite often, these messages are flat out fake stories about alleged rapes, murders and other crimes committed by refugees. There are also crack-pot conspiracy theories, racial slurs, incitation to violence, including the murder of politicians and celebrities as well as genocide.

    When I started teaching German to refugees, I suddenly had well-meaning people, none of which I would have pegged as far-right, warn me to be careful and tell me all sorts of horror stories about teachers beaten up by refugees, female volunteers raped and murdered and the like. When I asked the people where they’d heard those stories, the answer was inevitably “Facebook”. And when I asked about a more substantial source such as a news article, the answer was, “There are none, because the German media is forbidden to report about crimes committed by refugees.” Mind you, the people who told me that were not Pegida or AfD members, just folks who’d gotten exposed to xenophobic crap on Facebook. So yes, this crap does real harm and has fueled the rise of the ratings of the far right AfD from around 3% to 12%. So Facebook is facilitating the rise of far right parties, which apparently is not political at all.

    These problems are well known, but Facebook refused to do anything about the hate speech and knowing false news stories hosted on its network, until they were threatened with new anti-hate-speech laws promising huge fines for non-compliance.

    Of course, the real reason is that a photo of a female breast is easy to identify for an underpaid Facebook moderator in the Philippines, whereas hate speech in a foreign language is much more difficult to identify and evaluate.

  19. @Rev. Bob: Right on! It’s exactly the problem discussed in (12), turned up by a billion. I know a LOT of developers (like you and my husband) who’d love to help them out. For money commensurate with experience. Are all their employees too stupid to figure this out for their 6-figure salary? Or is it that the company and the libertarian fedora techbros just don’t care? I know which is more likely. Are swastikas and Pepe the Frog harder to identify than boobs, for either person or machine? Doubt it.

    @JJ: Besides the interface being bad, that top picture of an ugly being displayed with lots of little eye-strain inducing dots also is off-putting. And “email us a list of books you want and then we’ll tell you how much to PayPal”? What the heck kind of selling system is that?

    @Cora: FB is the biggest enabler of hate speech and actual fake news in the US too. It’s already political simply by allowing right-wing nut jobs to direct the discourse while banning mildly left-wing people like Gerrold, Ian, and non-nippled fat people. A progressive or gay or fat person can get troll-banned simply for existing, while a neo-Nazi can advocate for genocide or directly threaten harm to a specific person and that’s just fine.

    We see it again and again. It’s endemic; Gerrold is only one of thousands of cases.

    They don’t want to do better. That might take a fraction of a percent off their stock value, if they can’t get the eyeballs of trolls and sell them to companies. And they might lose a fraction of a percent if they paid moderators who are actually fluent in the language and culture of the area they’re moderating. But why bother with human decency when there’s so much money to be made?

  20. YAMM (Yet Another Meredith Moment): Swanwick’s Iron Dragon’s Daughter is currently $1.99.

    NAAMMBCN (Not Actually A Meredith Moment But Cool Nonetheless) Swords Against Darkness, an anthology edited by Paula Guran containing almost 1,000 pages of sword & sorcery goodness is now available. Howard, Moore, Brackett, Cherryh, Delany, Scott Lynch, Kameron Hurley, and many, many others.

    On an entirely unrelated and much sadder note, Stephen Furst (in these parts, probably best known as Vir Cotto on Babylon 5) has passed away.

  21. Firstly, while I am still struggling to spend as much time here as I’d like, File770 continues to be a source of much joy in my life. OGH, the contributors, community – all wonderful. I am a happier and more fulfilled person when I can be here, and I don’t think I could ask any more of any site or community.

    Secondly, I continue to be a bundle of delighted wriggles every time I see “Meredith Moment” – <3!

    Thirdly, as someone who has been known to spend a fair amount of time in public Facebook threads (I’ve been cutting down – I made a call that I’d rather be here – but I’ve done my time, especially as Engadget comment section’s Main Feminist Representative for awhile hahaha I have many regrets), Facebook’s reporting system sucks. Badly.

    Here is what happens, if you, lone Facebook user who doesn’t feel the need to incite an internet mob, reports a thing: If the thing happens to include one of a select number of keywords (think N word for black people, that sort of nakedly -ist or -phobic epithet), it will almost certainly get removed, presumably because that’s a really easy thing to automate. This is good! Except I would also bet it gets some false positives because of comments discussing -isms and -phobias without endorsing them.

    If the thing does not include one of those words (or nipples)? You’re almost always SOL. I’ve reported a lot – a lot! – of blatantly, nakedly racist, sexist, transphobic, islamophobic, homophobic etc etc comments that haven’t been removed because the person used, say, “gorilla” or avoided insults entirely but simply said disgusting things in a “””polite””” manner (e.g. “all [minority] cares about is money”). I have also seen multiple reports that videos of animal torture are rarely removed. I have personally had people threaten me but because it didn’t use any of those keywords it was considered perfectly acceptable.

    This is where (Facebook’s) automated systems fail. Great for keywords! Terrible at assessing overall content. Just, awful.

    I haven’t seen any noticeable improvements over the last few years.

    My personal wish, would be that reported things get someone’s actual human attention before being dismissed or deleted. Failing that, attention for reported things that don’t include the keywords. Whenever there’s en masse reports, it should always have a real human moderator look at it *first* because irrational internet attack mobs are a thing. Even if there’s a Dreaded Keyword.

  22. > On an entirely unrelated and much sadder note, Stephen Furst (in these parts, probably best known as Vir Cotto on Babylon 5) has passed away.
    For some of us, this is his shining moment:

    and of course, the denouement:

  23. I might be mistaken, but I think Instagram might have some sort of algorithm that predicts the likelihood of a user legitimately reporting a TOS breach and just being a dickhead troll because my first few reports of the endless porn-spam accounts that try to add either of my accounts on there took days to update, and now it takes only a few hours.

    If that isn’t a real thing, possibly they could develop something like that, so trolls on the whole become less effective over time and legit users get more effective. (IANADeveloper so have no idea how possible that idea is in the grand scheme of things)

  24. @Rev. Bob —

    Coming up with those “better, workable ideas” is WORK, and people get PAID for it. Not only do they get paid, they get paid WELL. You want us to do that for free. To quote Harlan Ellison on a similar subject, “Fuck you, pay me” if you want my solutions.

    Let’s turn that around.

    You don’t pay Facebook anything. So what makes you think you have the right to demand better solutions from THEM?

    At least with the government we get votes. Not so with Facebook. “Little” is infinitely more significant than “zero.”

    Of course you get votes with FB. This incident with Gerrold proves that, if nothing else.

    @Lenora Rose —

    You are looking st the Gerrold case as if it were in isolation. As if this were the only evidence we have.

    It’s the only evidence we have here in this thread. I’ve asked for other evidence of this same type of problem (comparing apples to apples) — none has been forthcoming so far.

    About every week or two someone I know sends through a screencap or several either showing one of two things: their complaint regarding a comment they flagged, often including the sort of politics that actively advocate for the deaths of hundreds or millions, often explicitly violent in themselves, with Facebook’s response indicating they have looked at the comment and deemed it not violating their standards.

    Specific examples, please. Again — there’s a difference between requesting a ban because somebody is a Nazi and requesting a ban because a Nazi has threatened to kill you. And we can’t tell which sort you’re talking about without specific examples.

    as one of your proposed solutions you’ve suggested if people here don’t like it they can build their own platform. I repeat merely for the egregious stupidity of the suggestion which even you should recognize, of challenginb individuals with individual incomes to compete directly with a company worth billions.

    It worked just fine in Gerrold’s case. Two groups of individuals with individual incomes competed over Gerrold’s access to FB. Our group won.

    @Cheryl S. —

    On my Facebook feed, I regularly get notifications that Janis Ian and Substantia Jones and/or her Adipositivity Project have been banned.

    Again — nakedness gets a different level of protection than words because nakedness may be political, but it is not words.

    @Cora —

    True, the selfie of the Syrian refugee with Angela Merkel was taken two years ago, but the photo keeps cropping up on Facebook

    Right. And, again, that’s a different issue than what went on with Gerrold. The Syrian-refugee photo is an issue of control over intellectual property, not an issue of access to speech.

    This guy has to keep reporting his photo to Facebook over and over again, because amazingly those same automated systems that banned David Gerrold following a flood of troll comments are utterly unable to flag a single recognisable photo for deletion upon appearance.

    And I agree with you that control over images is a valid complaint (with the proviso that I don’t have knowledge of how easy or difficult it may be to flag images in this way). But, again — apples and oranges.

    Regarding the nipples vs. Nazis controversy, as Jayn already said, banning images of women’s breasts is a political statement.

    I’ve already said the same thing myself.

    And racial slurs are not protected speech.

    Who says they aren’t?

    Besides, unlike the US Germany has laws against hate speech (which I’m very grateful for) and if Facebook wants to do business here, they should abide by our laws.

    Again — the issue of international law is an apples and oranges situation. Gerrold is American and lives in the USA.

    So Facebook is facilitating the rise of far right parties

    I agree with you — and I hate that it’s true. But that doesn’t mean I think FB should be banning them. Again — protection of speech means protection for EVERYONE equally.

    @lurkertype —

    It’s already political simply by allowing right-wing nut jobs to direct the discourse while banning mildly left-wing people like Gerrold, Ian, and non-nippled fat people.

    And, yet again — I don’t know who Ian is, but in Gerrold’s case the checks and balances worked. He was off of Facebook for all of one day. Cue the pearl clutching.

    @Meredith —

    If the thing does not include one of those words (or nipples)? You’re almost always SOL. I’ve reported a lot – a lot! – of blatantly, nakedly racist, sexist, transphobic, islamophobic, homophobic etc etc comments that haven’t been removed because the person used, say, “gorilla” or avoided insults entirely but simply said disgusting things in a “””polite””” manner (e.g. “all [minority] cares about is money”).

    And this gets back to the issue of protected speech. Do you not believe that speech should be protected? Should speech only be protected when you agree with it?

    I have also seen multiple reports that videos of animal torture are rarely removed. I have personally had people threaten me but because it didn’t use any of those keywords it was considered perfectly acceptable.

    Violence and threats of violence are my dividing line. Perhaps FB reporting could be improved by including a specific category for reports of violence and direct threats?

    My personal wish, would be that reported things get someone’s actual human attention before being dismissed or deleted.

    This is a good idea in theory, but would it work? Remember, FB often gets criticized for not acting quickly enough. But waiting for a human review means a time delay in responding. They’re damned if they do, and damned if they don’t.

  25. Speaking of dodging —

    @Rev. Bob —

    Coming up with those “better, workable ideas” is WORK, and people get PAID for it. Not only do they get paid, they get paid WELL. You want us to do that for free. To quote Harlan Ellison on a similar subject, “Fuck you, pay me” if you want my solutions.

    Let’s turn that around.

    You don’t pay Facebook anything. So what makes you think you have the right to demand better solutions from THEM?

    eta — oh, and it’s “her” handle, not “his”. 😉

  26. @Contrarius:

    I am the product Facebook sells to its advertisers. If I don’t stick around, their value drops – not much, just for me, but stack a bunch of us together and it makes a dent. If Facebook wants to make money, it has to keep its users happy.

    THAT gives us the right to demand better solutions.

  27. @Rev. Bob —

    I am the product Facebook sells to its advertisers. If I don’t stick around, their value drops – not much, just for me, but stack a bunch of us together and it makes a dent. If Facebook wants to make money, it has to keep its users happy.

    THAT gives us the right to demand better solutions.

    Nonsense. What that does is give you the right to vote by leaving the FB platform if you don’t like what they’re doing. You certainly have the right to say something along the lines of “Hey, if you don’t make this fix I’ll spend my social media time elsewhere” — but you don’t have any right to say “Hey, you are morally and/or legally obligated to make this change that I want.”

    And again, we can turn your argument around. Facebook has value to many people — it provides a platform not only for social interactions but for business and political exposure. So in a sense they ARE paying you by providing value to you. Does that not give FB the right to make certain demands from you? If you want to make money through FB, do you not need to keep FB happy?

    But backing off of that thought — You yourself have forcefully stated that FB has no right to make demands on you, because they aren’t paying you. Therefore, by your own logic, you have no right to make demands on them, because you aren’t paying them. It works both ways.

  28. @Contrarius: “you don’t have any right to say “Hey, you are morally and/or legally obligated to make this change that I want.””

    Speaking of strawmen… 🙄

    I’m done discussing this with you. You’ve “turned the argument around” so much I don’t think even you know what your point is. You want me to give you free algorithms if I want to say there’s a problem, which is patently absurd. (Does one have to be a doctor to report that their leg is broken?) You simultaneously want to give Facebook all the privileges of a private company when it comes to making decisions AND protect the vilest speech on it as a government-protected free speech zone.

    Your positions, like your arguments, are incoherent. Add my voice to the chorus which has already said so.

    ETA – One more thing…

    You yourself have forcefully stated that FB has no right to make demands on you, because they aren’t paying you.

    No, I told you to pay me if you want me to come up with a better idea. You demanded that here, not Facebook. Where should I send the invoice?

  29. @Rev. Bob–

    Speaking of strawmen… ?

    Hey, you’re the one who turned my request for pragmatic improvement suggestions into some supposed demand for free services. ? back atcha.

    Here’s my point: people have been calling FB things like “crappy” and “cheap and greedy” and throwing all sorts of moral judgments at it, and you yourself declared that you have “the right to demand better solutions”. Your supposed “right to demand” would mean just that — a moral right. But, no, you DON’T have that right. To paraphrase Gaiman, FB is not your bitch. Such demands imply that you are entitled to FB’s subservience — but you are not. If you don’t like the service FB provides to you for free, then you are free to take your valuable eyeballs elsewhere.

    Your positions, like your arguments, are incoherent. Add my voice to the chorus which has already said so.

    Sorry, Bob, but your failure to understand my argument does not magically render it incoherent. 😉

  30. Contrarius: I see zero value in giving you all the screenshots I can dig up this week only for you to micro-inspect each and every case and explain why this tiny alteration in situation makes it a false positive and not really a comparable situation.

    Everyone else seems to recognize a cumulative effect wherein facebook protects racist and anti QUILTBAG speech but bans non-offensive speech by progressives (even if ‘only’ for a short time until their friends rally if they’re famous enough.)

    That is a vastly bigger threat to genuine free speech than protecting hate speech is. Which many countries with pretty open media have managed to do without all your American hand-wringing about how, if Facebook should actually ban neo-nazi posters (and neo-naziism is the advocacy of mass murder even when called alt-right and spoken politely) they might somewhere fail to protect free speech in a manner worse than their present ‘trust neo-nazi mobs and ban progressives at their whim’ stance.

  31. @Lenora Rose —

    Evetyone flse seems to recognize

    These are very dangerous words. In many instances, things that “everyone else seems to recognize” are not actually true.

    To climate deniers, “everyone seems to recognize” that human-caused climate change is a hoax.

    To white nationalists, “everyone seems to recognize” that non-Caucasians are lesser beings.

    To conservative Christians, “everyone seems to recognize” that LGBTs are dreadful sinners.

    Watch out for words like that. Hard facts are much more reliable — but often more difficult to come by.

  32. @contrarius

    You began this discussion by lamenting that you did not know WHY OH WHY people were mad at FB over Gerrold’s case. When I pointed out that people were upset that FB required a protest in masses to rescind an unjust decision, leaving people without huge numbers of supporters SOL to deal with organized troll groups, you accepted this as an unpleasant fact, but made the flat, categorical statement of fact (without proof) THAT THIS WAS NOT FB’S FAULT. When it was pointed out to you that this was a crap-lousy way for FB to run things, you back away from your statement while denying you made it. You then say you want proof FB is managing cases like Gerrold’s badly. People mention other cases which you brush aside by saying things like “I haven’t heard of Ian” as if that’s disqualifying all by itself. When Meredith offers personal encounters with FB as her reasons, you disqualify their personal experience and demand further proof that it meets your exacting standards of fault for FB – presumably screenshots and explanations that you have not bothered to offer for any of YOUR statements. Let me move the goalposts back where they began…people have offered good and sufficient reasons for why they’re annoyed at FB, as you originally asked. Asking them to drag further evidence and links and proof is demanding effort that you have not been willing to expend, which is obnoxious.

  33. @Jayn —

    You began this discussion by lamenting that you did not know WHY OH WHY people were mad at FB over Gerrold’s case.

    Not quite — my actual words were “I don’t understand why so many people are upset with Facebook over this.” Much less dramatic than your rendition. 😉

    When I pointed out that people were upset that FB required a protest in masses to rescind an unjust decision, leaving people without huge numbers of supporters SOL to deal with organized troll groups

    No. Yet again — you asked a question, you did not make a claim of fact at that point.

    you accepted this as an unpleasant fact, but made the flat, categorical statement of fact (without proof) THAT THIS WAS NOT FB’S FAULT. When it was pointed out to you that this was a crap-lousy way for FB to run things, you back away from your statement while denying you made it.

    Absolutely false. I never denied I made the initial statement — in fact, I confirmed it ( June 17, 2017 at 2:23 pm). What I denied was your misinterpretation of my words (June 17, 2017 at 12:15 pm).

    You then say you want proof FB is managing cases like Gerrold’s badly.

    Not exactly, but close enough.

    People mention other cases which you brush aside by saying things like “I haven’t heard of Ian” as if that’s disqualifying all by itself.

    No. People said “there’s a bunch of other cases”, but they have not come up with any specifics. “I haven’t heard of Ian” is an invitation to provide more identifying info for that case, which was not forthcoming. And, I’m sorry, but vague claims like that are just about as reliable as a racist who says something like “black people commit a lot of crimes” and then decides that blacks must be evil.

    When Meredith offers personal encounters with FB as her reasons, you disqualify their personal experience

    And I would do the very same to a racist who said, “Well, I’ve seen a black person commit a crime — so black people must be evil!”

    Don’t expect standards of proof from other people that you don’t expect from yourself.

  34. The USS Sealion (SS-315), after its illustrioius service in WWII, was refitted for unconventional warfare. It carried special forces who would engage the enemy in argument. They pioneered a technique of questioning everything the enemy said as non-factual. If the enemy didn’t fall for the ploy, they could criticize the enemy as insincere and opposed to the Truth. Alternatively, if the enemy went along with it, it made the enemy spend vast amounts of time digging up supporting evidence which could be rejected as non-factual or simply ignored. The justification for “sealioning” was that, while US forces accomplished absolutely nothing of any military value, neither did the enemy forces they engaged. What can I say? It was the Cold War. At least it wasn’t as dangerous as the CIA experiments with LSD.

  35. You asked why people were angry at FB. Meredith tells you of incidents where people were attacked with racial epithets like ‘gorilla’ which FB shrugs its shoulders at. You deny she has any right to be angry about this, AND you liken her anger to a racist attack in itself. Doesn’t that seem a bit assholish to you?

    Instead of demanding cases that you then scoff at (you still haven’t explained why ‘I haven’t heard of Ian’ is an adequate rebuttal on your part) why don’t you exert yourself a smidge and bring us some PROOF of your assertion that FB is already managing things better than merely allowing groups of trolls to shout down individuals indiscrimnately, like, say, showing us a case where someone’s unfair ban was properly rescinded in good time WITHOUT the need for a huge outcry of multiple FB users?

  36. @Tom Becker: Please provide a citation from Jane’s Warships of the World

  37. Tom Becker, please accept this internet. It comes with a side of fries and the dessert of your choice.

  38. @Tom Becker,
    I am in awe.

    @PhilRM,
    Fortunately I was not drinking at the time, else you would owe me a new keyboard.

  39. @Tom Becker: Please accept this internet. Give a portion of it to Phil RM.

    Now, if our resident sea lion had been actually reading all the comments, s/he would have known that “Ian” referred to Janis Ian, who was given several sentences as another example of a progressive person who suffers from right-wing mobs trying to silence her on FB.* Even had the pinniped never heard of her before, she was directly mentioned in this thread as an example which was requested.

    But taking on the facts and evidence from other people sooo interferes with grandstanding and goalpost moving! It’s much easier when you can ignore what the other side is saying and demand they give infinite examples to you without paying any attention to the ones they already have — or bothering to give any counter-examples of your own.

    Either put up, shut up, or take Rev. Bob’s advice to go JAQ off somewhere else.

    *She’s a singer who’s had Top 10 hits, and commits the occasional science fiction. I met her at Worldcon, so she’s definitely one of our tribe.

  40. @Contrarius: Jesus but you are being an obtuse asshat.

    I’m an actual lawyer who has dealt professionally with First Amendment issues, and your whining and moaning about the First Amendment and free speech has been the most clueless and ignorant commentary I have seen in a long time. Congratulations. You have demonstrated a new low.

  41. I forgot earlier and I’m sorry. PhilRm, you also get a side of fries and the dessert of your choice and amnesty from blame for the choking.

    @lurkertype – *She’s a singer who’s had Top 10 hits, and commits the occasional science fiction. I met her at Worldcon, so she’s definitely one of our tribe.

    Janis Ian and her wife got married when they were in Canada (Toronto?) for a con. George R. R. Martin was their best man. She also does kaiju Godzilla haikus that make me snarf my coffee pretty regularly.

  42. @lurkertype Yes, I should’ve pointed out to contrarius that he’d already been given info about Janis Ian that he’d completely ignored, but I’d hoped he’d take the hint and read back what he’d missed…instead he just dug in further. Sorry I encouraged him, guys.

  43. @Cheryl: That’s right! I forgot about her con wedding, though I’ve seen the pictures. D’oh.

    @jayn: I wouldn’t worry; he’s perfectly capable of digging in by himself, and perfectly incapable of reading what he ignored. He’s got his mind made up, don’t confuse him with facts. Not your fault at all.

    I would say Janis is probably better-known to the general public than Gerrold is, even if they’re both fen/pros.

    @Aaron: Is it time to deploy the all-purpose New Yorker cartoon caption?
    (if anyone doesn’t know it, google and become one of today’s Lucky 10K!)

  44. @lurkertype: But do any of us want to add Contrarius to our networks on LinkedIn?

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